As economies of scale increase in agricultural and other operations, the use of larger or faster equipment by individual producers or custom operators to perform large amounts of processing increases. In the agricultural setting in particular, where tasks such as harvesting are carried out by a large or custom operator, safety, economy and speed of changeover between fields necessitates the rapid transport of equipment between working areas.
Self-propelled swathers and other similar equipment present a particular transportation problem. It is necessary to rapidly move them between fields by a trailer or some other similar means. The trailers are often difficult to load, or require elaborate mechanical measures to provide for a quickly loading trailer with rapidly deployable load-bearing ramps or the like.
With a wide unit such as a swather it is necessary either to remove the cutting table or wide working equipment and load it separately end to end on a trailer, and drive the propulsion unit onto a typical rear loading transport unit, for reattachment of the table or other parts at the next field, which is a labour intensive process, or alternatively it is necessary to load the entire unit end to end along the axis of the transport unit.
Several attempts have been made to provide transport trailers and equipment which allow for the rapid transport of swathers and other similar equipment end-to-end along the axis of a transport vehicle, with varying degrees of success. Where successful side-loading trailers have been built however they generally include an elaborate mechanical apparatus to tilt the loading deck of the trailer once the swather is loaded, or to tilt the deck down for unloading, or alternatively it is necessary to lift the unit in some way onto the load surface of such a flat deck unit. It would be preferable to provide a rapid side-loading apparatus for the carriage of such equipment that required no elaborate mechanical assistance for any tilting motion, and did not require any labour intensive activity to load the apparatus which in the past may have even included partial disassembly of the unit.